BOOK REVIEW: Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty is a contemporary novel about dysfunctional relationships. It uses one day in the lives of three couples (and their children) as a pivot point. One day, an impromptu barbecue is held in the backyard of one of the couples, and the event that takes place impacts all their lives.

Each of the couples is happily married, with husband and wife well-suited to one another, aware of the necessary compromises, etc. As groups of friends, however, they have little in common and don’t mesh well. Nevertheless, they have this barbecue and this thing happens.

The chapters alternate points of view and time periods, going back and forth to the barbecue (with its horrible thing) and the future, which is painfully altered by this disastrous shameful happening that no one can talk about, but that can be hinted about and obsessed over. Each of the barbecue chapters bring us a tiny step closer to finding out what happened, but ends on a cliff-hanger just as an important piece of information is about to be revealed.

The characters and their individual problems were interesting enough, but the book moved slowly as the narrative had trouble taking off. I found myself annoyed with the choppiness and nearly stopped reading, but felt I had invested too much time in the book to give up. I had the impression that whatever the terrible thing was that someone did (or that they all did?) would end up being anticlimactic because the build up took so long.

Once the big secret was revealed, the book actually got better as the characters settled down to healing their wounds and getting on with their lives. There were still a few loose ends to keep the story going until everything could be neatly wrapped up by the end. As it concluded, I found it to have been an interesting plot with likeable characters who grew and learned. It was only the structure of the book that I found off-putting. However, I think it’s the suspense created by this structure that is responsible for the book’s success, so it may be that I was just in the wrong frame of mind for reading it.